Director of Programme Development & Quality (DPDQ)

ROLE PURPOSE:

As a member of the Senior Management Team (SMT) in Country, the Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ) is responsible for driving cross-functional engagement in the delivery of Country Strategy Plans (CSPs), developing annual plans and reporting on results. 

S/he  is  responsible  for  ensuring  development  and  delivery  of  high  quality,  evidence-based, innovative  programs  for  children,  in  all  contexts,  that  contribute  to  Save  the  Children’s  global Breakthroughs: Learn, Survive, Be Protected. The Director of PDQ ensures that a robust monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (MEAL) system is in place, that the country office engages in the collection and use of evidence and that this is shared across the global organization, and that reliable data is used for decision-making and program design. 

One key aspect of the role is ensuring capability building, mentoring and coaching of technical specialists in order to support program quality in line with global standards and key performance indicators. As a senior leader in the country office s/he plays a representational role with the  government, donors, partners,  peer  agencies,  SC  Members  and others.   The Director of PDQ supports strategic positioning with donors and partners and leads on project design to ensure that the country office strategy can be delivered in line with child rights programming principles.

In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.

SCOPE OF ROLE :

Reports to: Country Director

Staff Reporting to this Post: 9

Staff directly reporting to this post: Head of MEAL, Education Specialist, Health Specialist, Nutrition Specialist, Child Protection Specialist, Child Poverty Specialist, and new Business Development Manager.

Budget Responsibilities : N/A

Role Dimensions :

As part of the senior staff team in the Country Office, the Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ) must demonstrate the qualities of agile leadership.  S/he plays a key role in defining and pursuing the strategic direction  for  Save  the  Children’s  programs  in  Niger,  ensuring  the  relevance, coherence, safety and impact of our programs for children in all contexts. This is a challenging role requiring an individual who can work with complexity and multiple tasks at one time.  

It is essential that the Director of Program Development and Quality builds and maintains strong relationships across functions  within  the  Country Office,  including  with  team  members  from  Operations,  Award  Management, Humanitarian, Advocacy and Finance, and s/he should lead by example in demonstrating this cross- functional  collaboration.  This  role  demands  dedication  to  demonstrating  outcomes  for  children, experience  in  integrated  child  rights  programming  and  a  highly  motivated  leader.  S/he  has  specific oversight  for  ensuring  that  programs  demonstrate  thematic  excellence  in  contributing  to  Save  the Children’s three Breakthroughs for children, especially for the most deprived and marginalized: no child dies from preventable causes before their fifth birthday; all children learn from a quality basic education; and violence against children is no longer tolerated.

KEY AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY :

Strategy, Planning and Reporting (20%)

• Lead the development/updating of the Child Rights Situation Analysis, including analysis of country context and taking into account child rights principles, ensuring participation and buy-in from all relevant staff, partners and other stakeholders as necessary
• Lead the SMT to develop/update and drive forward the Country Strategy Plan (CSP) that is in line with the global strategy, Ambition 2030, with child rights at the core of all programming and advocacy work.
• Provide leadership on development of the Country Annual Plan, monitoring of progress against the plan, and completion of accurate, on-time Country Annual Report of outcomes and impact for children, aligned with the Global Results Framework.
• Facilitate the development and pursuit of thematic and cross-cutting strategic priorities in line with the CSP, including gender equality, to guide current and future SC programming and Humanitarian Strategies.
• Support ownership and commitment to the Country Office strategy by all staff and departments through clear communication, regular feedback on progress and engagement of all functions in updates.
• Participate in global discussions and working groups to represent country office, and the voice of children, in strategy design and policy development.
• Support change processes and roll-out new ways of working to improve achievement of the CSP.

Program Design & Development (30%)

• Based on tracking provided by the Awards Management team, review and position for opportunities that will drive the CSP.
• In consultation with the Country Director and Members, ensure technical engagement with donors to pre-position and prepare for opportunities, and engage in strategic positioning work directly as appropriate.
• Ensure that needs assessments are well-designed and allow an in-depth analysis of the situation

to be able to better answer beneficiaries’ needs, with a clear identification of key stakeholders.

• If necessary and when appropriate, anticipate the deployment of needs assessments for collecting data and identify key concept notes for potential funding opportunity.
• Play a leading role in designing proposals, including:

o     Engaging with technical experts as needed to ensure high quality, evidence-based designs that draw on needs assessments, learning from past programs, using the best experience of SC in country or in the region, developing innovative approaches, using SCI common approaches, ensuring all criteria regarding SCI quality standards are met in terms of accountability, sustainability, child participation, safe programming, gender and child safeguarding principles;

o     Coordinate the team of technical advisors to provide timely and high-quality inputs into proposals and proactively and regularly communicate planned requirements for program design and implementation to relevant CO departments/functions

o     Ensuring partners are identified and appropriately engaged in program design, linking with Operations and Awards teams as need be for assessments, especially to strengthen gender sensitivity at design stage;

• Ensuring proposal designs and their budgets include robust MEAL plans that are aligned with the Global Results Framework (and therefore advance towards our Breakthroughs), incorporate Common Approaches as relevant, and build in critical learning questions.

o Incorporating child and community participation into design, as relevant.

• Support New Business with coordination of overall funding process from both grants and SC

members.  This including: developing funding strategies, creating grant proposals, and identifying strategic leads and concepts.

• Identify local and international organizations to build competitive consortia able to deliver results for children and value for money.

  Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Learning (MEAL) and Knowledge management  (20%)

• Oversee a monitoring system that provides timely and accurate project results by embedding MEAL  across  program  implementation.  This requires  ensuring  effective  collaboration  across MEAL  staff,  Technical  Specialists,  Technical  Advisors  and  program  implementation  teams  to develop  log frames,  indicators,  implementation  plans,  quality  benchmarks,  monitoring  and evaluation frameworks and related tools.
• Lead   program   quality  improvements   by  monitoring   and   improving  Programme   KPI performance,  including  resourcing  and  conducting  high-quality  evaluations  to  demonstrate outcomes and impact and ensuring that accountability mechanisms are in place for all projects so that identified actions are resolved, with critical issues escalated to senior management.
• Ensure the research, evaluation and policy work of the Country Office contributes to generation of evidence for development and improvement of Common Approaches, sound decision making and policy influencing internally and externally.
• Establish effective program learning and knowledge management systems to support adaptive programming and innovation that improves outcomes for children.
• Oversee Save the Children Niger’s operational research programs, with the MEAL TA to ensure children are supported through the evidence based programmes and new techniques.
• Disseminate information relating to the outcome of research projects widely and – in particular
• to  the  Government  and  to  other  humanitarian  and  development  actors,  and  through publications or OneNet.

     Partnerships (5%)

• Play a leading role in identifying, nurturing and strengthening strategic partnerships with local and international civil society organizations, NGOs, governments etc., in advancing the country and global  strategy  to  inspire  our  three  breakthroughs  for  the  most  deprived  and  marginalized children.

     Staff Management, Mentorship, and Development  (20%)

• Ensure  high-caliber  staffing  within  Program  Development  and  Quality,  and  engagement  of additional technical support when needed to deliver quality project design and delivery.
• Ensure that all PDQ staff understand and are able to perform their role in delivering first-class, quality programs for children in both development and emergency contexts through effective onboarding and clear workplans.
• Ensure  that  staff  proactively  build  and  maintain  technical,  managerial  and  leadership  skills, including competencies in child rights programming, child safeguarding and Common Approaches, providing coaching opportunities when needed.
• Ensure the recruitment, training, and promotion  of  staff as appropriate and ensure availability of appropriate professional development opportunities for staff.
• Manage individual and PDQ team performance   using principles of leadership agility, and Save the Children’s performance management system through:
  • Effective use of the Develop to Perform System including the establishment of clear, measurable  objectives,  ongoing  feedback,  periodic  reviews  and  fair  and  unbiased evaluations;
  •  Coaching, mentoring and other developmental opportunities;
  • Recognition and rewards for outstanding performance;
  • Documentation  of  performance  that  is  less  than  satisfactory,  with  appropriate performance improvements/ workplans

Responsibilities of Safeguarding and Safe Programming (5%)

• Report all cases internal and external
• Contribute to the application of the Safeguarding  policy  and  Code  of  Conduct,  raise  awareness  on the  policy  (Children,  partners, community)
• Contribute  in  lessons  learned  and  documentation  of  good  practices  under  the  focal  point leadership focal point
• To be a model in his/her work and private life, and respect the code of conduct and the policy of Safeguarding
• Know and respect local procedures
• Make sure of the well-being of children
• Ensure work place is a safe place for Children

QUALIFICATIONS

• Approximately  10 years management experience in an International NGO environment, including significant field operations experience of full spectrum implementation:  running both development and emergency programs and program design
• Master’s level qualification in one or more of appropriate technical area (social protection, food security, education, health& nutrition)

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential :

• Strong background in resilience programming for children in fragile and conflict environments
• Significant  knowledge  of  international  humanitarian  systems,  institutions  and  donors,  and  of procedures, accountability frameworks and best practices in emergency management
• Experience and strong understanding of in humanitarian / emergency response, development and nexus programming
• Track record in engaging with donors and raising funds for projects that deliver quality results for children.
• Significant experience in securing and managing grants from major institutional donors
• Track record in coordinating complex proposal design processes
• Solid project management skills related to program development cycle and working across cross-functional teams with a proven history of delivering results
• Ability to analyze information, evaluate options and to think and plan strategically – ability to think laterally
• An  in-depth  understanding  of  national  and  international  development  issues  in particular in relation to children and child rights
• Previous  experience  of managing  and  developing  a  team  and  the  ability  to  lead, motivate and develop others
• Fluency in English and French
• Commitment  to  and  understanding  of  Save  the  Children’s  aims,  values  and principles including rights-based approaches
• Excellent interpersonal, communication and presentation skills

Desireable:

 Ability and willingness to change work practices and hours, and work with incoming teams in the event of major emergencies.

L’ORGANISATION

Nous employons environ 25.000 personnes dans le monde entier et travaillons sur le terrain dans plus de 100 pays afin d’aider les enfants touchés par des crises ou ceux qui ont besoin de meilleurs soins de santé, d’éducation et de protection de l’enfance. Nous faisons également campagne et défendons au plus haut niveau, pour réaliser le droit des enfants et pour faire entendre leur voix.

Nous travaillons sur trois avancées dans la façon dont le monde traite les enfants d’ici 2030:

§  Aucun enfant ne meurt suite à des causes évitables avant son 5e anniversaire

§  Tous les enfants ont une éducation de base de qualité

§  La violence à l’égard des enfants n’est plus tolérée

Nous sommes conscients que des personnes formidables font une grande organisation et que nos employés jouent un rôle crucial en nous aidant à atteindre nos ambitions pour les enfants. Nous valorisons nos employés et nous proposons une carrière significative et enrichissante, ainsi qu’un lieu de travail collaboratif et inclusif où l’ambition, la créativité et l’intégrité sont très appréciées.
Informations pour Postuler:

Les dossiers de candidatures (CV + Lettre de motivation) doivent être envoyés uniquement en ligne à travers le système de recrutement en ligne de Save the Children:

Nous devons assurer la sécurité des enfants à travers nos processus de sélection, lesquelles reflètent notre engagement à la protection des enfants et incluent des enquêtes de références rigoureuses

Les candidatures féminines sont vivement encouragées

Il est porté à la connaissance des candidats que Save the Children International ne demande aucun paiement, ni frais durant tout le processus de recrutement. Toute demande allant dans ce sens doit être immédiatement signalée car contraire aux valeurs et pratiques de notre organisation.